The gentleman from San Francisco, and other stories

THE GENTLEMAN FROM
* SAN FRANCISCO *
AND OTHER STORIES.

45

University of California • Berkeley

THE GENTLEMAN FROM
SAN FRANCISCO

AND OTHER STORMS

THE GENTLEMAN FROM
SAN FRANCISCO

AND OTHER STORIES

NOTE

The first story in this book "The Gentleman
from San Francisco" is translated by D. H.
Lawrence and S. S. Koteliansky. Owing to
a mistake Mr. Lawrence's name has been
omitted from the title-page. The three other
stories are translated by S. S. Koteliansky and
Leonard W >olf.

PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF AT
E HOGARTH PRESS, PARADISE ROAD, RICHMOND
1922

THE GENTLEMAN FROM
SAN FRANCISCO

AND OTHER STORIES

BY

I. A. BUNIN

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY

S. S. KOTELIANSKY AND LEONARD WOOLF

PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF AT
THE HOGARTH PRESS, PARADISE ROAD, RICHMOND

1922

Printed in Great Britain

h

Wiflt'am Clowes and Sons, Limited,
London and Beccles.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
GENTLE BREATHING .
KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH .

. 66
SON ...»

THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN
FRANCISCO

" Woe to thee, Babylon, that mighty city ! "

APOCALYPSE.

THE gentleman from San Francisco — nobody
either in Capri or Naples ever remembered his
name — was setting out with his wife and daughter
for the Old World, to spend there two years of
pleasure.

He was fully convinced of his right to rest,
to enjoy long and comfortable travels, and so
forth. Because, in the first place he was rich,
and in the second place, notwithstanding his
fifty-eight years, he was just starting to live. Up
to the present he had not lived, but only existed ;
quite well, it is true, yet with all his hopes on the
future. He had worked incessantly — and the
Chinamen whom he employed by the thousand
in his factories knew what that meant. Now
at last he realized that a great deal had been
accomplished, and that he had almost reached the
level of those whom he had taken as his ideals,

2 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

so he made up his mind to pause for a breathing
space. Men of his class usually began their
enjoyments with a trip to Europe, India, Egypt.
He decided to do the same. He wished naturally
to reward himself in the first place for all his
years of toil, but he was quite glad that his wife
and daughter should also share in his pleasures.
True, his wife was not distinguished by any
marked susceptibilities, but then elderly American
women are all passionate travellers. As for his
daughter, a girl no longer young and somewhat
delicate, travel was really necessary for her :
apart from the question of health, do not happy
meetings often take place in the course of travel ?
One may find one's self sitting next to a multi-
millionaire at table, or examining frescoes side
by side with him.

The itinerary planned by the Gentleman of
San Francisco was extensive. In December and
January he hoped to enjoy the sun of southern
Italy, the monuments of antiquity, the tarantella,
the serenades of vagrant minstrels, and, finally,
that which men of his age are most susceptible
to, the love of quite young Neapolitan girls, even
when the love is not altogether disinterestedly
given. Carnival he thought of spending in Nice,
in Monte Carlo, where at that season gathers
the most select society, the precise society on
which depend all the blessings of civilization —

SAN FRANCISCO 3

the fashion in evening dress, the stability of
thrones, the declaration of wars, the prosperity
of hotels ; where some devote themselves pas-
sionately to automobile and boat races, others to
roulette, others to what is called flirtation, and
others to the shooting of pigeons which beauti-
fully soar from their traps over emerald lawns,
against a background of forget-me-not sea,
instantly to fall, hitting the ground in little white
heaps. The beginning of March he wished to
devote to Florence, Passion Week in Rome, to
hear the music of the Miserere ; his plans also
included Venice, Paris, bull-fights in Seville,
bathing in the British Isles ; then Athens, Con-
stantinople, Egypt, even Japan . . . certainly
on his way home. . . . And everything at the
outset went splendidly.

It was the end of November. Practically all
the way to Gibraltar the voyage passed in icy
darkness, varied by storms of wet snow. Yet the
ship travelled well, even without much rolling.
The passengers on board were many, and all
people of some importance. The boat, the
famous Atlantis^ resembled a most expensive
European hotel with all modern equipments : a
night refreshment bar, Turkish baths, a news-
paper printed on board ; so that the days aboard
the liner passed in the most select manner. The
passengers rose early, to the sound of bugles

4 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

sounding shrilly through the corridors in that
grey twilit hour, when day was breaking slowly
and sullenly over the grey-green, watery desert,
which rolled heavily in the fog. Clad in their
flannel pyjamas, the gentlemen took coffee,
chocolate, or cocoa, then seated themselves in
marble baths, did exercises, thereby whetting
their appetite and their sense of well-being, made
their toilet for the day, and proceeded to break-
fast. Till eleven o'clock they were supposed to
stroll cheerfully on deck, breathing the cold fresh-
ness of the ocean ; or they played table-tennis or
other games, that they might have an appetite for
their eleven o'clock refreshment of sandwiches
and bouillon ; after which they read their news-
paper with pleasure, and calmly awaited luncheon
— which was a still more varied and nourishing
meal than breakfast. The two hours which fol-
lowed luncheon were devoted to rest. All the
decks were crowded with lounge chairs on which
lay passengers wrapped in plaids, looking at the
mist-heavy sky or the foamy hillocks which
flashed behind the bows, and dozing sweetly.
Till five o'clock, when, refreshed and lively, they
were treated to strong, fragrant tea and sweet
cakes. At seven bugle-calls announced a dinner of
nine courses. And now the Gentleman from San
Francisco, rubbing his hands in a rising flush of
vital forces, hastened to his state cabin to dress.

SAN FRANCISCO 5

In the evening, the tiers of the Atlantis yawned
in the darkness as with innumerable fiery eyes,
and a multitude of servants in the kitchens,
sculleries, wine-cellars, worked with a special
frenzy. The ocean heaving beyond was terrible,
but no one thought of it, firmly believing in the
captain's power over it. The captain was a
ginger-haired man of monstrous size and weight,
apparently always torpid, who looked in his
uniform with broad gold stripes very like a huge
idol, and who rarely emerged from his mysterious
chambers to show himself to the passengers.
Every minute the siren howled from the bows
with hellish moroseness, and screamed with fury,
but few diners heard it — it was drowned by the
sounds of an excellent string band, exquisitely
and untiringly playing in the huge two-tiered hall
that was decorated with marble and covered with
velvet carpets, flooded with feasts of light from
crystal chandeliers and gilded girandoles, and
crowded with ladies in bare shoulders and jewels,
with men in dinner-jackets, elegant waiters and
respectful maitres d'hotel^ one of whom, he who
took the wine-orders only, wore a chain round
his neck like a lord mayor. Dinner-jacket and
perfect linen made the Gentleman from San
Francisco look much younger. Dry, of small
stature, badly built but strongly made, polished
to a glow and in due measure animated, he sat

6 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

in the golden-pearly radiance of this palace, with
a bottle of amber Johannisberg at his hand, and
glasses, large and small, of delicate crystal, and
a curly bunch of fresh hyacinths. There was
something Mongolian in his yellowish face with
its trimmed silvery moustache, large teeth blazing
with gold, and strong bald head blazing like old
ivory. Richly dressed, but in keeping with her
age, sat his wife, a big, broad, quiet woman.
Intricately, but lightly and transparently dressed,
with an innocent immodesty, sat his daughter,
tall, slim, her magnificent hair splendidly done,
her breath fragrant with violet cachous, and the
tenderest little rosy moles showing near her lip
and between her bare, slightly powdered shoulder-
blades. The dinner lasted two whole hours, to
be followed by dancing in the ball-room, whence
the men, including, of course, the Gentleman
from San Francisco, proceeded to the bar ; there,
with their feet cocked up on the tables, they
settled the destinies of nations in the course of
their political and stock-exchange conversations,
smoking meanwhile Havana cigars and drinking
liqueurs till they were crimson in the face, waited
on all the while by negroes in red jackets with
eyes like peeled, hard-boiled eggs. Outside, the
ocean heaved in black mountains ; the snow-
storm hissed furiously in the clogged cordage ;
the steamer trembled in every fibre as she

SAN FRANCISCO 7

surmounted these watery hills and struggled with
the storm, ploughing through the moving masses
which every now and then reared in front of her,
foam-crested. The siren, choked by the fog,
groaned in mortal anguish. The watchmen in
the look-out towers froze with cold, and went
mad with their super-human straining of atten-
tion. As the gloomy and sultry depths of the
inferno, as the ninth circle, was the submerged
womb of the steamer, where gigantic furnaces
roared and dully giggled, devouring with their
red-hot maws mountains of coal cast hoarsely in
by men naked to the waist, bathed in their own
corrosive dirty sweat, and lurid with the purple-
red reflection of flame. But in the refreshment
bar men jauntily put their feet up on the tables,
showing their patent-leather pumps, and sipped
cognac or other liqueurs, and swam in waves of
fragrant smoke as they chatted in well-bred
manner. In the dancing hall light and warmth
and joy were poured over everything ; couples
turned in the waltz or writhed in the tango, while
the music insistently, shamelessly, delightfully,
with sadness entreated for one, only one thing,
one and the same thing all the time. Amongst
this resplendent crowd was an ambassador, a
little dry modest old man ; a great millionaire,
clean-shaven, tall, of an indefinite age, looking
like a prelate in his old-fashioned dress-coat ;

8 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

also a famous Spanish author, and an international
beauty already the least bit faded, of unenviable
reputation ; finally an exquisite loving couple,
whom everybody watched curiously because of
their unconcealed happiness : he danced only
with her, and sang, with great skill, only to
her accompaniment, and everything about them
seemed so charming ! — and only the captain
knew that this couple had been engaged by the
steamship company to play at love for a good
salary, and that they had been sailing for a long
time, now on one liner, now on another.

At Gibraltar the sun gladdened them all : it
was like early spring. A new passenger appeared
on board, arousing general interest. He was a
hereditary prince of a certain Asiatic state,
travelling incognito : a small man, as if all made
of wood, though his movements were alert ;
broad-faced, in gold-rimmed glasses, a little
unpleasant because of his large black moustache
which was sparse and transparent like that of a
corpse ; but on the whole inoffensive, simple,
modest. In the Mediterranean they met once
more the breath of winter. Waves, large and
florid as the tail of a peacock, waves with snow-
white crests heaved under the impulse of the
tramontane wind, and came merrily, madly rush-
ing towards the ship, in the bright lustre of a
perfectly clear sky. The next day the sky began

SAN FRANCISCO 9

to pale, the horizon grew dim, land was approach-
ing : Ischia, Capri could be seen through the
glasses, then Naples herself, looking like pieces
of sugar strewn at the foot of some dove-coloured
mass ; whilst beyond, vague and deadly white
with snow, a range of distant mountains. The
decks were crowded. Many ladies and gentle-
men were putting on light fur-trimmed coats.
Noiseless Chinese servant boys, bandy-legged,
with pitch-black plaits hanging down to their
heels, and with girlish thick eyebrows, unob-
trusively came and went, carrying up the stair-
ways plaids, canes, valises, hand-bags of crocodile
leather, and never speaking above a whisper.
The daughter of the Gentleman from San Fran-
cisco stood side by side with the prince, who, by
a happy circumstance, had been introduced to
her the previous evening. She had the air of
one looking fixedly into the distance towards
something which he was pointing out to her, and
which he was explaining hurriedly, in a low voice.
Owing to his size, he looked amongst the rest
like a boy. Altogether he was not handsome,
rather queer, with his spectacles, bowler hat, and
English coat, and then the hair of his sparse
moustache just like horse-hair, and the swarthy,
thin skin of his face seeming stretched over his
features and slightly varnished. But the girl
listened to him, and was so excited that she did

B

io THE GENTLEMAN FROM

not know what he was saying. Her heart beat
with incomprehensible rapture because of him,
because he was standing next to her and talking
to her, to her alone. Everything, everything
about him was so unusual — his dry hands, his
clean skin under which flowed ancient, royal blood,
even his plain, but somehow particularly tidy
European dress ; everything was invested with
an indefinable glamour, with all that was calcu-
lated to enthrall a young woman. The Gentle-
man from San Francisco, wearing for his part a
silk hat and grey spats over patent-leather shoes,
kept eyeing the famous beauty who stood near
him, a tall, wonderful figure, blonde, with her
eyes painted according to the latest Parisian
fashion, holding on a silver chain a tiny, cringing,
hairless little dog, to which she was addressing
herself all the time. And the daughter, feeling
some vague embarrassment, tried not to notice
her father.

Like all Americans, he was very liberal with
his money when travelling. And like all of them,
he believed in the full sincerity and good-will of
those who brought his food and drinks, served
him from morn till night, anticipated his smallest
desire, watched over his cleanliness and rest,
carried his things, called the porters, conveyed
his trunks to the hotels. So it was everywhere,
so it was during the voyage, so it ought to be in

SAN FRANCISCO n

Naples. Naples grew and drew nearer. The
brass band, shining with the brass of their
instruments, had already assembled on deck.
Suddenly they deafened everybody with the
strains of their triumphant rag-time. The giant
captain appeared in full uniform on the bridge,
and like a benign pagan idol waved his hands to
the passengers in a gesture of welcome. And to
the Gentleman from San Francisco, as well as to
every other passenger, it seemed as if for him
alone was thundered forth that rag-time march,
so greatly beloved by proud America ; for him
alone the Captain's hand waved, welcoming him
on his safe arrival. Then, when at last the
Atlantis entered port and veered her many-tiered
mass against the quay that was crowded with
expectant people, when the gangways began their
rattling — ah, then what a lot of porters and their
assistants in caps with golden galloons, what a
lot of all sorts of commissionaires, whistling boys,
and sturdy ragamuffins with packs of postcards
in their hands rushed to meet the Gentleman
from San Francisco with offers of their services !
With what amiable contempt he grinned at those
ragamuffins as he walked to the automobile of
the very same hotel at which the prince would
probably put up, and calmly muttered between
his teeth, now in English, now in Italian — " Go
away ! Via ! "

12 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

Life at Naples started immediately in the set
routine. Early in the morning, breakfast in a
gloomy dining-room with a draughty damp wind
blowing in from the windows that opened on to
a little stony garden : a cloudy, unpromising day,
and a crowd of guides at the doors of the vestibule.
Then the first smiles of a warm, pinky-coloured
sun, and from the high, overhanging balcony a
view of Vesuvius, bathed to the feet in the radiant
vapours of the morning sky, while beyond, over
the silvery-pearly ripple of the bay, the subtle
outline of Capri upon the horizon ! Then
nearer, tiny donkeys running in two-wheeled
buggies away below on the sticky embankment,
and detachments of tiny soldiers marching off
with cheerful and defiant music.

After this a walk to the taxi-stand, and a slow
drive along crowded, narrow, damp corridors of
streets, between high, many-windowed houses.
Visits to deadly-clean museums, smoothly and
pleasantly lighted, but monotonously, as if from
the reflection of snow. Or visits to churches,
cold, smelling of wax, and always the same thing :
a majestic portal, curtained with a heavy leather
curtain : inside, a huge emptiness, silence, lonely
little flames of clustered candles ruddying the
depths of the interior on some altar decorated
with ribbon : a forlorn old woman amid dark
benches, slippery gravestones under one's feet,

SAN FRANCISCO 13

and somebody's infallibly famous " Descent from
the Cross." Luncheon at one o'clock on San
Martino, where quite a number of the very
selectest people gather about midday, and where
once the daughter of the Gentleman from San
Francisco almost became ill with joy, fancying
she saw the prince sitting in the hall, although
she knew from the newspapers that he had gone
to Rome for a time. At five o'clock, tea in the
hotel, in the smart salon where it was so warm,
with the deep carpets and blazing fires. After
which the thought of dinner — and again the
powerful commanding voice of the gong heard
over all the floors, and again strings of bare-
shouldered ladies rustling with their silks on the
staircases and reflecting themselves in the mirrors,
again the wide-flung, hospitable, palatial dining-
room, the red jackets of musicians on the plat-
form, the black flock of waiters around the
maitre d'hdtel, who with extraordinary skill was
pouring out a thick, roseate soup into soup-plates.
The dinners, as usual, were the crowning event
of the day. Every one dressed as if for a wedding,
and so abundant were the dishes, the wines, the
table-waters, sweetmeats, and fruit, that at about
eleven o'clock in the evening the chamber-maids
would take to every room rubber hot-water
bottles, to warm the stomachs of those who had
dined.

i4 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

None the less, December of that year was not
a success for Naples. The porters and secretaries
were abashed if spoken to about the weather, only
guiltily lifting their shoulders and murmuring
that they could not possibly remember such a
season ; although this was not the first year they
had had to make such murmurs, or to hint that
" everywhere something terrible is happening.' *
. . . Unprecedented rains and storms on the
Riviera, snow in Athens, Etna also piled with
snow and glowing red at night ; tourists fleeing
from the cold of Palermo. . . . The morning
sun daily deceived the Neapolitans. The sky
invariably grew grey towards midday, and fine
rain began to fall, falling thicker and colder.
The palms of the hotel approach glistened like
wet tin ; the city seemed peculiarly dirty and
narrow, the museums excessively dull ; the cigar-
ends of the fat cab-men, whose rubber rain-capes
flapped like wings in the wind, seemed insuffer-
ably stinking, the energetic cracking of whips
over the ears of thin-necked horses sounded alto-
gether false, and the clack of the shoes of the
signorini who cleaned the tram-lines quite horrible,
while the women, walking through the mud, with
their black heads uncovered in the rain, seemed
disgustingly short-legged : not to mention the
stench and dampness of foul fish which drifted
from the quay where the sea was foaming. The

SAN FRANCISCO 15

gentleman and lady from San Francisco began
to bicker in the mornings ; their daughter went
about pale and head-achey, and then roused up
again, went into raptures over everything, and
was lovely, charming. Charming were those
tender, complicated feelings which had been
aroused in her by the meeting with the plain little
man in whose veins ran such special blood. But
after all, does it matter what awakens a maiden
soul — whether it is money, fame, or noble birth ?
. . . Everybody declared that in Sorrento, or in
Capri, it was quite different. There it was
warmer, sunnier, the lemon-trees were in bloom,
the morals were purer, the wine unadulterated.
So behold, the family from San Francisco decided
to go with all their trunks to Capri, after which
they would return and settle down in Sorrento :
when they had seen Capri, trodden the stones
where stood Tiberius' palaces, visited the famous
caves of the Blue Grotto, and listened to the pipers
from Abruzzi, who wander about the isle during
the month of the Nativity, singing the praises of
the Virgin.

On the day of departure — a very memorable
day for the family from San Francisco — the sun
did not come out even in the morning. A heavy
fog hid Vesuvius to the base, and came greying
low over the leaden heave of the sea, whose waters
were concealed from the eye at a distance of half

1 6 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

a mile. Capri was completely invisible, as if it
had never existed on earth. The little steamer
that was making for the island tossed so violently
from side to side that the family from San Fran-
cisco lay like stones on the sofas in the miserable
saloon of the tiny boat, their feet wrapped in
plaids, and their eyes closed. The lady, as she
thought, suffered worst of all, and several times
was overcome with sickness. It seemed to her
that she was dying. But the stewardess who came
to and fro with the basin, the stewardess who had
been for years, day in, day out, through heat and
cold, tossing on these waves, and who was still
indefatigable, even kind to every one — she only
smiled. The younger lady from San Francisco
was deathly pale, and held in her teeth a slice of
lemon. Now not even the thought of meeting
the prince at Sorrento, where he was due to arrive
by Christmas, could gladden her. The gentle-
man lay flat on his back, in a broad overcoat and
a flat cap, and did not loosen his jaws throughout
the voyage. His face grew dark, his moustache
white, his head ached furiously. For the last
few days, owing to the bad weather, he had been
drinking heavily, and had more than once admired
the " tableaux vivants." The rain whipped on
the rattling window-panes, under which water
dripped on to the sofas, the wind beat the
masts with a howl, and at moments, aided by an

SAN FRANCISCO 17

onrushing wave, laid the little steamer right on its
side, whereupon something would roll noisily
away below. At the stopping places, Castella-
mare, Sorrento, things were a little better. But
even the ship heaved frightfully, and the coast
with all its precipices, gardens, pines, pink and
white hotels, and hazy, curly green mountains
swooped past the window, up and down, as it
were on swings. The boats bumped against the
side of the ship, the sailors and passengers shouted
lustily, and somewhere a child, as if crushed to
death, choked itself with screaming. The damp
wind blew through the doors, and outside on the
sea, from a reeling boat which showed the flag
of the Hotel Royal, a fellow with guttural French
exaggeration yelled unceasingly : '* Rrroy-al !
Hotel Rrroy-al ! " intending to lure passengers
aboard his craft. Then the Gentleman from San
Francisco, feeling, as he ought to have felt, quite
an old man, thought with anguish and spite of
all these " Royals," " Splendids,'1 " Excelsiors,"
and of these greedy, good-for-nothing, garlic-
stinking fellows called Italians. Once, during a
halt, on opening his eyes and rising from the sofa
he saw under the rocky cliff-curtain of the coast
a heap of such miserable stone hovels, all musty
and mouldy, stuck on top of one another by the
very water, among the boats, and the rags of all
sorts, tin cans and brown fishing-nets, and,

1 8 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

remembering that this was the very Italy he had
come to enjoy, he was seized with despair. . . .
At last, in the twilight, the black mass of the
island began to loom nearer, looking as if it
were bored through at the base with little red
lights. The wind grew softer, warmer, more
sweet-smelling. Over the tamed waves, undu-
lating like black oil, there came flowing golden
boa-constrictors of light from the lanterns of
the harbour. . . . Then suddenly the anchor
rumbled and fell with a splash into the water.
Furious cries of the boatmen shouting against one
another came from all directions. And relief
was felt at once. The electric light of the cabin
shone brighter, and a desire to eat, drink, smoke,
move once more made itself felt. . . . Ten
minutes later the family from San Francisco dis-
embarked into a large boat ; in a quarter of an
hour they had stepped on to the stones of the
quay, and were soon seated in the bright little
car of the funicular railway. With a buzz they
were ascending the slope, past the stakes of the
vineyards and wet, sturdy- orange-trees, here and
there protected by straw screens, past the thick
glossy foliage and the brilliancy of orange fruits.
. . . Sweetly smells the earth in Italy after rain,
and each of her islands has its own peculiar
aroma.

The island of Capri was damp and dark that

SAN FRANCISCO 19

evening. For the moment, however, it had
revived, and was lighted up here and there as
usual at the hour of the steamer's arrival. At the
top of the ascent, on the little piazza by the
funicular station stood the crowd of those whose
duty it was to receive with propriety the luggage
of the Gentleman from San Francisco. There
were other arrivals too, but none worthy of notice :
a few Russians who had settled in Capri, untidy
and absent-minded owing to their bookish
thoughts, spectacled, bearded, half-buried in the
upturned collars of their thick woollen overcoats.
Then a group of long-legged, long-necked, round-
headed German youths in Tirolese costumes, with
knapsacks over their shoulders, needing no
assistance, feeling everywhere at home and always
economical in tips. The Gentleman from San
Francisco, who kept quietly apart from both
groups, was marked out at once. He and his
ladies were hastily assisted from the car, men ran
in front to show them the way, and they set off
on foot, surrounded by urchins and by the sturdy
Capri women who carry on their heads the luggage
of decent travellers. Across the piazza, that
looked like an opera scene in the light of the
electric globe that swung aloft in the damp wind,
clacked the wooden pattens of the women-porters.
The gang of urchins began to whistle to the
Gentleman from San Francisco, and to turn

20 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

somersaults around him, whilst he, as if on the
stage, marched among them towards a mediaeval
archway and under huddled houses, behind which
led a little echoing lane, past tufts of palm-trees
showing above the flat roofs to the left, and under
the stars in the dark blue sky, upwards towards
the shining entrance of the hotel. . . . And
again it seemed as if purely in honour of the guests
from San Francisco the damp little town on the
rocky little island of the Mediterranean had
revived from its evening stupor, that their arrival
alone had made the hotel proprietor so happy and
hearty, and that for them had been waiting the
Chinese gong which sent its howlings through all
the house the moment they crossed the doorstep.
The sight of the proprietor, a superbly elegant
young man with a polite and exquisite bow,
startled for a moment the Gentleman from San
Francisco. In the first flash, he remembered that
amid the chaos of images which had possessed
him the previous night in his sleep, he had seen
that very man, to a / the same man, in the same
full-skirted frock-coat and with the same glossy,
perfectly smoothed hair. Startled, he hesitated
for a second. But long, long ago he had lost the
last mustard-seed of any mystical feeling he might
ever have had, and his surprise at once faded. He
told the curious coincidence of dream and reality
jestingly to his wife and daughter, as they passed

SAN FRANCISCO 21

along the hotel corridor. And only his daughter
glanced at him with a little alarm. Her heart
suddenly contracted with home-sickness, with such
a violent feeling of loneliness in this dark, foreign
island, that she nearly wept. As usual, however,
she did not mention her feelings to her father.

Reuss XVI I., a high personage who had spent
three whole weeks on Capri, had just left, and
the visitors were installed in the suite of rooms
that he had occupied. To them was assigned the
most beautiful and expert chambermaid, a Belgian
with a thin, firmly corseted figure, and a starched
cap in the shape of a tiny indented crown. The
most experienced and distinguished-looking foot-
man was placed at their service, a coal-black,
fiery-eyed Sicilian, and also the smartest waiter,
the small, stout Luigi, a tremendous buffoon,
who had seen a good deal of life. In a minute
or two a gentle tap was heard at the door of the
Gentleman from San Francisco, and there stood
the maitre d'hdtely a Frenchman, who had come
to ask if the guests would take dinner, and to
report, in case of answer in the affirmative — of
which, however, he had small doubt — that this
evening there were Mediterranean lobsters, roast
beef, asparagus, pheasants, etc., etc. The floor
was still rocking under the feet of the Gentleman
from San Francisco, so rolled about had he been
on that wretched, grubby Italian steamer. Yet

22 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

with his own hands, calmly, though clumsily
from lack of experience, he closed the window
which had banged at the entrance of the maitre
cThotel) shutting out the drifting smell of distant
kitchens and of wet flowers in the garden. Then
he turned and replied with unhurried distinctness,
that they would take dinner, that their table must
be far from the door, in the very centre of the
dining-room, that they would have local wine and
champagne, moderately dry and slightly cooled.
To all of which the maitre d y hotel gave assent in
the most varied intonations, which conveyed that
there was not and could not be the faintest
question of the justness of the desires of the
Gentleman from San Francisco, and that every-
thing should be exactly as he wished. At the
end he inclined his head and politely inquired :

" Is that all, sir ? "

On receiving a lingering " Yes," he added
that Carmela and Giuseppe, famous all over Italy
and " to all the world of tourists," were going to
dance the tarantella that evening in the hall.

" I have seen picture-postcards of her," said
the Gentleman from San Francisco, in a voice
expressive of nothing. " And is Giuseppe her
husband ? "

" Her cousin, sir," replied the maitre d' hotel.

The Gentleman from San Francisco was silent
for a while, thinking of something, but saying

SAN FRANCISCO 23

nothing ; then he dismissed the man with a nod
of the head. After which he began to make
preparations as if for his wedding. He turned
on all the electric lights, and filled the mirrors
with brilliance and reflection of furniture and
open trunks. He began to shave and wash,
ringing the bell every minute, and down the
corridor raced and crossed the impatient ringings
from the rooms of his wife and daughter. Luigi,
with the nimbleness peculiar to certain stout
people, making grimaces of horror which brought
tears of laughter to the eyes of chambermaids
dashing past with marble-white pails, turned a
cart-wheel to the gentleman's door, and tapping
with his knuckles, in a voice of sham timidity and
respectfulness reduced to idiocy, asked :

" Ha suonato, Signore ? "

From behind the door, a slow, grating, offen-
sively polite voice :

" Yes, come in."

What were the feelings, what were the
thoughts of the Gentleman from San Francisco
on that evening so significant to him ? He felt
nothing exceptional, since unfortunately every-
thing on this earth is too simple in appearance.
Even had he felt something imminent in his
soul, all the same he would have reasoned that,
whatever it might be, it could not take place
immediately. Besides, as with all who have just

24 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

experienced sea-sickness, he was very hungry,
and looked forward with delight to the first
spoonful of soup, the first mouthful of wine. So
he performed the customary business of dressing
in a state of excitement which left no room for
reflection.

Having shaved, washed, and dexterously
arranged several artificial teeth, standing in front
of the mirror, he moistened his silver-mounted
brushes and plastered the remains of his thick
pearly hair on his swarthy yellow skull. He
drew on to his strong old body, with its abdomen
protuberant from excessive good living, his cream-
coloured silk underwear, put black silk socks and
patent-leather slippers on his flat-footed feet. He
put sleeve-links in the shining cuffs of his snow-
white shirt, and bending forward so that his shirt
front bulged out, he arranged his trousers that
were pulled up high by his silk braces, and began
to torture himself, putting his collar-stud through
the stiff collar. The floor was still rocking
beneath him, the tips of his fingers hurt, the stud
at moments pinched the flabby skin in the recess
under his Adam's apple, but he persisted, and
at last, with eyes all strained and face dove-blue
from the over-tight collar that enclosed his throat,
he finished the business and sat down exhausted in
front of the pier glass, which reflected the whole
of him, and repeated him in all the other mirrors.

SAN FRANCISCO 25

" It is awful ! " he muttered, dropping his
strong, bald head, but without trying to under-
stand or to know what was awful. Then, with
habitual careful attention examining his gouty-
jointed short fingers and large, convex, almond-
shaped finger-nails, he repeated : " It is
awful. . . ."

As if from a pagan temple shrilly resounded
the second gong through the hotel. The Gentle-
man from San Francisco got up hastily, pulled
his shirt-collar still tighter with his tie, and his
abdomen tighter with his open waistcoat, settled
his cuffs and again examined himself in the
mirror. . . . " That Carmela, swarthy, with her
enticing eyes, looking like a mulatto in her
dazzling-coloured dress, chiefly orange, she must
be an extraordinary dancer " he was think-
ing. So, cheerfully leaving his room and walking
on the carpet to his wife's room, he called to ask
if they were nearly ready.

"In five minutes, Dad," came the gay voice
of the girl from behind the door. "I'm arranging
my hair."

" Right-o ! " said the Gentleman from San
Francisco.

Imagining to himself her long hair hanging
to the floor, he slowly walked along the corridors
and staircases covered with red carpet, down-
stairs, looking for the reading-room. The

c

26 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

servants he encountered on the way pressed close
to the wall, and he walked past as if not noticing
them. An old lady, late for dinner, already
stooping with age, with milk-white hair and yet
decollete in her pale grey silk dress, hurried at
top speed, funnily, henlike, and he easily over-
took her. By the glass-door of the dining-room,
wherein the guests had already started the meal,
he stopped before a little table heaped with boxes
of cigars and cigarettes, and taking a large
Manilla, threw three liras on the table. After
which he passed along the winter terrace, and
glanced through an open window. From the
darkness came a waft of soft air, and there loomed
the top of an old palm-tree that spread its boughs
over the stars, looking like a giant, bringing
down the far-off smooth quivering of the sea. . . .
In the reading-room, cosy with the shaded reading-
lamps, a grey, untidy German, looking rather
like Ibsen in his round silver-rimmed spectacles
and with mad astonished eyes, stood rustling the
newspapers. After coldly eyeing him, the Gentle-
man from San Francisco seated himself in a deep
leather armchair in a corner, by a lamp with a
green shade, put on his pince-nez, and, with a
stretch of his neck because of the tightness of his
shirt-collar, obliterated himself behind a news-
paper. He glanced over the headlines, read a
few sentences about the never-ending Balkan

SAN FRANCISCO 27

war, then with a habitual movement turned over
the page of the newspaper — when suddenly the
lines blazed up before him in a glassy sheen, his
neck swelled, his eyes bulged, and the pince-nez
came flying off his nose. . . . He lunged for-
ward, wanted to breathe — and rattled wildly. His
lower jaw dropped, and his mouth shone with gold
fillings. His head fell swaying on his shoulder,
his shirt-front bulged out basket-like, and all his
body, writhing, with heels scraping up the
carpet, slid down to the floor, struggling des-
perately with some invisible foe.

If the German had not been in the reading-
room, the frightful affair could have been hushed
up. Instantly, through obscure passages the
Gentleman from San Francisco could have been
hurried away to some dark corner, and not a
single guest would have discovered what he had
been up to. But the German dashed out of the
room with a yell, alarming the house and all the
diners. Many sprang up from the table, up-
setting their chairs, many, pallid, ran towards the
reading-room, and in every language it was
asked : " What — what's the matter ? " None
answered intelligibly, nobody understood, for
even to-day people are more surprised at death
than at anything else, and never want to believe
it is true. The proprietor rushed from one guest
to another, trying to keep back those who were

28 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

hastening up, to soothe them with assurances that
it was a mere trifle, a fainting-fit that had over-
come a certain Gentleman from San Francisco.
. . . But no one heeded him. Many saw how
the porters and waiters were tearing off the tie,
waistcoat, and crumpled dress-coat from that
same gentleman, even, for some reason or other,
pulling off his patent evening-shoes from his
black-silk, flat-footed feet. And he was still
writhing. He continued to struggle with death,
by no means wanting to yield to that which had
so unexpectedly and rudely overtaken him. He
rolled his head, rattled like one throttled, and
turned up the whites of his eyes as if he were
drunk. When he had been hastily carried into
room No. 43, the smallest, wretchedest, dampest,
and coldest room at the end of the bottom
corridor, his daughter came running with her hair
all loose, her dressing-gown flying open, showing
her bosom raised by her corsets : then his wife,
large and heavy and completely dressed for
dinner, her mouth opened round with terror.
But by that time he had already ceased rolling
his head.

In a quarter of an hour the hotel settled down
somehow or other. But the evening was ruined.
The guests, returning to the dining-room, finished
their dinner in silence, with a look of injury on
their faces, whilst the proprietor went from one

SAN FRANCISCO 29

to another, shrugging his shoulders in hopeless
and natural irritation, feeling himself guilty
through no fault of his own, assuring everybody
that he perfectly realized " how disagreeable this
is," and giving his word that he would take
" every possible measure within his power " to
remove the trouble. The tarantella had to be
cancelled, the superfluous lights were switched
off, most of the guests went to the bar, and soon
the house became so quiet that the ticking of the
clock was heard distinctly in the hall, where
the lonely parrot woodenly muttered something
as he bustled about in his cage preparatory to
going to sleep, and managed to fall asleep at
length with his paw absurdly suspended from the
little upper perch. . . . The Gentleman from
San Francisco lay on a cheap iron bed under
coarse blankets on to which fell a dim light from
the obscure electric lamp in the ceiling. An ice-
bag slid down on his wet, cold forehead ; his
blue, already lifeless face grew gradually cold ;
the hoarse bubbling which came from his open
mouth, where the gleam of gold still showed,
grew weak. The Gentleman from San Francisco
rattled no longer ; he was no more — something
else lay in his place. His wife, his daughter, the
doctor, and the servants stood and watched him
dully. Suddenly that which they feared and
expected happened. The rattling ceased. And

30 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

slowly, slowly under their eyes a pallor spread
over the face of the deceased, his features began
to grow thinner, more transparent . . . with a
beauty which might have suited him long ago. . . .

Entered the proprietor. " Gia, e morto ! "
whispered the doctor to him. The proprietor
raised his shoulders, as if it were not his affair.
The wife, on whose cheeks tears were slowly
trickling, approached and timidly asked that the
deceased should be taken to his own room.

" Oh no, madame," hastily replied the pro-
prietor, politely, but coldly, and not in English,
but in French. He was no longer interested in
the trifling sum the guests from San Francisco
would leave at his cash desk. ' That is abso-
lutely impossible." Adding by way of explana-
tion, that he valued that suite of rooms highly,
and that should he accede to madame's request,
the news would be known all over Capri and no
one would take the suite afterwards.

The young lady, who had glanced at him
strangely all the time, now sat down in a chair
and sobbed, with her handkerchief to her mouth.
The elder lady's tears dried at once, her face
flared up. Raising her voice and using her own
language she began to insist, unable to believe
that the respect for them had gone already. The
manager cut her short with polite dignity. " If
madame does not like the ways of the hotel, he

SAN FRANCISCO 31

dare not detain her." And he announced de-
cisively that the corpse must be removed at
dawn : the police had already been notified, and
an official would arrive presently to attend to the
necessary formalities. " Is it possible to get a
plain coffin ? " madame asked. Unfortunately
not ! Impossible ! And there was no time to
make one. It would have to be arranged
somehow. Yes, the English soda-water came
in large strong boxes — if the divisions were
removed.

The whole hotel was asleep. The window
of No. 43 was open, on to a corner of the garden
where, under a high stone wall ridged with
broken glass, grew a battered banana tree. The
light was turned off, the door locked, the room
deserted. The deceased remained in the dark-
ness, blue stars glanced at him from the black
sky, a cricket started to chirp with sad carelessness
in the wall. . . . Out in the dimly-lit corridor
two chambermaids were seated in a window-
sill, mending something. Entered Luigi, in
slippers, with a heap of clothes in his hand.

" Pronto ? " he asked, in a singing whisper,
indicating with his eyes the dreadful door at the
end of the corridor. Then giving a slight wave
thither with his free hand : " Patenza ! " he
shouted in a whisper, as though sending off a
train. The chambermaids, choking with noiseless

32 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

laughter, dropped their heads on each other's
shoulders.

Tip-toeing, Luigi went to the very door,
tapped, and cocking his head on one side asked
respectfully, in a subdued tone :

" Ha suonato, Signore ? "

Then contracting his throat and shoving out
his jaw, he answered himself in a grating, drawling,
mournful voice, which seemed to come from behind
the door :

" Tes, come in, . . ."

When the dawn grew white at the window of
No. 43, and a damp wind began rustling the
tattered fronds of the banana tree ; as the blue
sky of morning lifted and unfolded over Capri,
and Monte Solaro, pure and distinct, grew golden,
catching the sun which was rising beyond the
far-off blue mountains of Italy ; just as the
labourers who were mending the paths of the
islands for the tourists came out for work, a long
box was carried into room No. 43. Soon this
box weighed heavily, and it painfully pressed the
knees of the porter who was carrying it in a one-
horse cab down the winding white high-road,
between stone walls and vineyards, down, down
the face of Capri to the sea. The driver, a weakly
little fellow with reddened eyes, in a little old
jacket with sleeves too short and bursting boots,
kept flogging his wiry small horse that was

SAN FRANCISCO 33

decorated in Sicilian fashion, its harness tinkling
with busy little bells and fringed with fringes of
scarlet wool, the high saddle-peak gleaming with
copper and tufted with colour, and a yard-long
plume nodding from the pony's cropped head,
from between the ears. The cabby had spent the
whole night playing dice in the inn, and was still
under the effects of drink. Silent, he was de-
pressed by his own debauchery and vice : by the
fact that he gambled away to the last farthing all
those copper coins with which his pockets had
yesterday been full, in all four lire, forty centesimi.
But the morning was fresh. In such air, with
the sea all round, under the morning sky head-
aches evaporate, and man soon regains his cheer-
fulness. Moreover, the cabby was cheered by
this unexpected fare which he was making out
of some Gentleman from San Francisco, who was
nodding with his dead head in a box at the back.
The little steamer, which lay like a water-beetle
on the tender bright blueness which brims the
bay of Naples, was already giving the final hoots,
and this tooting resounded again cheerily all over
the island. Each contour, each ridge, each rock
was so clearly visible in every direction, it was as
if there were no atmosphere at all. Near the
beach the porter in the cab was overtaken by the
head porter dashing down in an automobile with
the lady and her daughter, both pale, their eyes

34 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

swollen with the tears of a sleepless night. . . .
And in ten minutes the little steamer again churned
up the water and made her way back to Sorrento,
to Castellamare, bearing away from Capri for ever
the family from San Francisco. . . . And peace
and tranquillity reigned once more on the
island.

On that island two thousand years ago lived
a man entangled in his own infamous and strange
acts, one whose rule for some reason extended
over millions of people, and who, having lost his
head through the absurdity of such power, com-
mitted deeds which have established him for ever
in the memory of mankind ; mankind which in
the mass now rules the world just as hideously
and incomprehensibly as he ruled it then. And
men come here from all quarters of the globe to
look at the ruins of the stone house where that
one man lived, on the brink of one of the steepest
cliffs in the island. On this exquisite morning
all who had come to Capri for that purpose were
still asleep in the hotels, although through the
streets already trotted little mouse-coloured
donkeys with red saddles, towards the hotel
entrances where they would wait patiently until,
after a good sleep and a square meal, young and
old American men and women, German men and
women would emerge and be hoisted up into the
saddles, to be followed up the stony paths, yea

SAN FRANCISCO 35

to the very summit of Monte Tiberio, by old per-
sistent beggar-women of Capri, with sticks in
their sinewy hands. Quieted by the fact that the
dead old Gentleman from San Francisco, who had
intended to be one of the pleasure party but who
had only succeeded in frightening the rest with
the reminder of death, was now being shipped to
Naples, the happy tourists still slept soundly, the
island was still quiet, the shops in the little town
not yet open. Only fish and greens were being
sold in the tiny piazza, only simple folk were
present, and amongst them, as usual without
occupation, the tall old boatman Lorenzo, thorough
debauchee and handsome figure, famous all over
Italy, model for many a picture. He had already
sold for a trifle two lobsters which he had caught
in the night, and which were rustling in the apron
of the cook of that very same hotel where the
family from San Francisco had spent the night.
And now Lorenzo could stand calmly till evening,
with a majestic air showing off his rags and gazing
round, holding his clay pipe with its long reed
mouth-piece in his hand, and letting his scarlet
bonnet slip over one ear. For as a matter of fact
he received a salary from the little town, from the
commune which found it profitable to pay him
to stand about and make a picturesque figure —
as everybody knows. . . . Down the precipices
of Monte Solaro, down the stony little stairs cut

36 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

in the rock of the old Phoenician road came two
Abruzzi mountaineers, descending from Anacapri.
One carried a bagpipe under his leather cloak,
a large goat skin with two little pipes ; the other
had a sort of wooden flute. They descended, and
the whole land, joyous, was sunny beneath them.
They saw the rocky, heaving shoulder of the
island, which lay almost entirely at their feet,
swimming in the fairy blueness of the water.
Shining morning vapours rose over the sea to
the east, under a dazzling sun which already
burned hot as it rose higher and higher ; and
there, far off, the dimly cerulean masses of Italy,
of her near and far mountains, still wavered blue
as if in the world's morning, in a beauty no words
can express. . . . Halfway down the descent the
pipers slackened their pace. Above the road, in
a grotto of the rocky face of Monte Solaro stood
the Mother of God, the sun full upon her, giving
her a splendour of snow-white and blue raiment,
and royal crown rusty from all weathers. Meek
and merciful, she raised her eyes to heaven, to the
eternal and blessed mansions of her thrice-holy
Son. The pipers bared their heads, put their
pipes to their lips : and there streamed forth
naive and meekly joyous praises to the sun, to the
morning, to Her, Immaculate, who would inter-
cede for all who suffer in this malicious and lovely
world, and to Him, born of Her womb among

SAN FRANCISCO 37

the caves of Bethlehem, in a lowly shepherd's hut,
in the far Judean land. . . .

And the body of the dead old man from San
Francisco was returning home, to its grave, to
the shores of the New World. Having been sub-
jected to many humiliations, much human neglect,
after a week's wandering from one warehouse to
another, it was carried at last on to the same
renowned vessel which so short a time ago, and
with such honour, had borne him living to the
Old World. But now he was to be hidden far
from the knowledge of the voyagers. Closed in
a tar-coated coffin, he was lowered deep into the
vessel's dark hold. And again, again the ship
set out on the long voyage. She passed at night
near Capri, and to those who were looking out
from the island, sad seemed the lights of the ship
slowly hiding themselves in the sea's darkness.
But there aboard the liner, in the bright halls
shining with lights and marble, gay dancing filled
the evening, as usual. . . .

The second evening, and the third evening,
still they danced, amid a storm that swept over
the ocean, booming like a funeral service, rolling
up mountains of mourning darkness silvered with
foam. Through the snow the numerous fiery
eyes of the ship were hardly visible to the Devil
who watched from the rocks of Gibraltar, from
the stony gateway of two worlds, peering after

38 THE GENTLEMAN FROM

the vessel as she disappeared into the night and
storm. The Devil was huge as a cliff. But huger
still was the liner, many storeyed, many funnelled,
created by the presumption of the New Man with
the old heart. The blizzard smote the rigging and
the funnels, and whitened the ship with snow,
but she was enduring, firm, majestic — and
horrible. On the topmost deck rose lonely
amongst the snowy whirlwind the cosy and dim
quarters where lay the heavy master of the ship,
he who was like a pagan idol, sunk now in a light,
uneasy slumber. Through his sleep he heard the
sombre howl and furious screechings of the siren,
muffled by the blizzard. But again he reassured
himself by the nearness of that which stood
behind his wall, and was in the last resort incom-
prehensible to him : by the large, apparently
armoured cabin which was now and then filled
with a mysterious rumbling, throbbing, and
crackling of blue fires that flared up explosive
around the pale face of the telegraphist who,
with a metal hoop fixed on his head, was eagerly
straining to catch the dim voices of vessels which
spoke to him from hundreds of miles away. In
the depths, in the under-water womb of the
Atlantis^ steel glimmered and steam wheezed, and
huge masses of machinery and thousand-ton
boilers dripped with water and oil, as the motion
of the ship was steadily cooked in this vast kitchen

SAN FRANCISCO 39

heated by hellish furnaces from beneath. Here
bubbled in their awful concentration the powers
which were being transmitted to the keel, down
an infinitely long round tunnel lit up and brilliant
like a gigantic gun-barrel, along which slowly,
with a regularity crushing to the human soul,
revolved a gigantic shaft, precisely like a living
monster coiling and uncoiling its endless length
down the tunnel, sliding on its bed of oil. The
middle of the Atlantis^ the warm, luxurious
cabins, dining-rooms, halls, shed light and joy,
buzzed with the chatter of an elegant crowd, was
fragrant with fresh flowers, and quivered with
the sounds of a string orchestra. And again
amidst that crowd, amidst the brilliance of lights,
silks, diamonds, and bare feminine shoulders, a
slim and supple pair of hired lovers painfully
writhed and at moments convulsively clashed. A
sinfully discreet, pretty girl with lowered lashes
and hair innocently dressed, and a tallish young
man with black hair looking as if it were glued
on, pale with powder, and wearing the most
elegant patent-leather shoes and a narrow, long-
tailed dress coat, a beau resembling an enormous
leech. And no one knew that this couple had
long since grown weary of shamly tormenting
themselves with their beatific love-tortures, to the
sound of bawdy-sad music ; nor did any one know
of that thing which lay deep, deep below at the

4o

very bottom of the dark hold, near the gloomy and
sultry bowels of the ship that was so gravely
overcoming the darkness, the ocean, the
blizzard.

GENTLE BREATHING

IN the cemetery above a fresh mound of earth
stands a new cross of oak — strong, heavy, smooth,
a pleasant thing to look at. It is April, but the
days are grey. From a long way off one can see
through the bare trees the tomb-stones in the
cemetery — a spacious, real country or cathedral
town cemetery ; the cold wind goes whistling,
whistling through the china wreath at the foot
of the cross. In the cross itself is set a rather
large bronze medallion, and in the medallion is
a portrait of a smart and charming school-girl,
with happy, astonishingly vivacious eyes.

It is Olga Meschersky.

As a little girl there was nothing to distinguish
her in the noisy crowd of brown dresses which
made its discordant and youthful hum in the
corridors and class-rooms ; all that one could
say of her was that she was just one of a number
of pretty, rich, happy little girls, that she was
clever, but playful, and very careless of the pre-
cepts of her class-teacher. Then she began to
develop and to blossom, not by days, but by

41

42 GENTLE BREATHING

hours. At fouiteen, with a slim waist and grace-
ful legs, there was already well developed the
outline of her breasts and all those contours of
which the charm has never yet been expressed in
human words ; at fifteen she was said to be a
beauty. How carefully some of her school friends
did their hair, how clean they were, how careful
and restrained in their movements ! But she
was afraid of nothing — neither of ink-stains on
her fingers, nor of a flushed face, nor of dis-
hevelled hair, nor of a bare knee after a rush and
a tumble. Without a thought or an effort on
her part, imperceptibly there came to her every-
thing which so distinguished her from the rest
of the school during her last two years — daintiness,
smartness, quickness, the bright and intelligent
gleam in her eyes. No one danced like Olga
Meschersky, no one could run or skate like her,
no one at dances had as many admirers as she
had, and for some reason no one was so popular
with the junior classes. Imperceptibly she grew
up into a girl and imperceptibly her fame in the
school became established, and already there were
rumours that she is flighty, that she cannot live
without admirers, that the schoolboy, Shensin,
is madly in love with her, that she, too, perhaps
loves him, but is so changeable in her treatment
of him that he tried to commit suicide. . . .

During her last winter, Olga Meschersky

GENTLE BREATHING 43

went quite crazy with happiness, so they said at
school. It was a snowy, sunny, frosty winter ;
the sun would go down early behind the grove
of tall fir-trees in the snowy school garden ; but
it was always fine and radiant weather, with a
promise of frost and sun again to-morrow, a walk
in Cathedral Street, skating in the town park, a
pink sunset, music, and that perpetually moving
crowd in which Olga Meschersky seemed to be
the smartest, the most careless, and the happiest.
And then, one day, when she was rushing like a
whirlwind through the recreation room with the
little girls chasing her and screaming for joy, she
was unexpectedly called up to the headmistress.
She stopped short, took one deep breath, with a
quick movement, already a habit, arranged her
hair, gave a pull to the corners of her apron to
bring it up on her shoulders, and with shining
eyes ran upstairs. The headmistress, small,
youngish, but grey-haired, sat quietly with her
knitting in her hands at the writing-table, under the
portrait of the Tsar.

" Good morning, Miss Meschersky, " she said
in French, without lifting her eyes from her
knitting. ' I am sorry that this is not the first
time that I have had to call you here to speak
to you about your behaviour. "

" I am attending, madam," answered Olga,
coming up to the table, looking at her brightly and

44 GENTLE BREATHING

happily, but with an expressionless face, and curtsy-
ing so lightly and gracefully, as only she could.

" You will attend badly — unfortunately I have
become convinced of that," said the headmistress,
giving a pull at the thread so that the ball rolled
away over the polished floor, and Olga watched
it with curiosity. The headmistress raised her
eyes : " I shall not repeat myself, I shall not say
much," she said.

Olga very much liked the unusually clean and
large study ; on frosty days the air in it was so
pleasant with the warmth from the shining Dutch
fire-place, and the fresh lilies-of-the-valley on the
writing-table. She glanced at the young Tsar,
painted full-length in a splendid hall, at the
smooth parting in the white, neatly waved hair
of the headmistress ; she waited in silence.

* You are no longer a little girl," said the
headmistress meaningly, beginning to feel secretly
irritated.

* Yes, madam," answered Olga simply,
almost merrily.

" But neither are you a woman yet," said the
headmistress, still more meaningly, and her pale
face flushed a little. '* To begin with, why do you
do your hair like that ? You do it like a woman."

" It is not my fault, madam, that I have nice
hair," Olga replied, and gave a little touch with
both hands to her beautifully dressed hair.

GENTLE BREATHING 45

" Ah, is that it ? You are not to blame ! "
said the headmistress. " You are not to blame
for the way you do your hair ; you are not to
blame for those expensive combs ; you are not
to blame for ruining your parents with your twenty-
rouble shoes. But, I repeat, you completely
forget that you are still only a schoolgirl. . . ."

And here Olga, without losing her simplicity
and calm, suddenly interrupted her politely :

" Excuse me, madam, you are mistaken —
I am a woman. And, do you know who is to
blame for that ? My father's friend and neigh-
bour, your brother, Alexey Mikhailovitch Malyn-
tin. It happened last summer in the country. ..."

And a month after this conversation, a Cossack
officer, ungainly and of plebeian appearance, who
had absolutely nothing in common with Olga
Meschersky's circle, shot her on the platform of
the railway station, in a large crowd of people
who had just arrived by train. And the incredible
confession of Olga Meschersky, which had stunned
the headmistress, was completely confirmed ; the
officer told the coroner that Meschersky had led
him on, had had a liaison with him, had promised
to marry him, and at the railway station on the
day of the murder, while seeing him off to
Novocherkask had suddenly told him that she
had never thought of marrying him, that all the

46 GENTLE BREATHING

talk about marrage was only to make a fool of
him, and she gave him her diary to read with the
pages in it which told about Malyntin.

" I glanced through those pages," said the
officer, " went out on to the platform where she
was walking up and down, and waiting for me
to finish reading it, and I shot her. The diary
is in the pocket of my overcoat ; look at the
entry for July 10 of last year."

And this is what the coroner read :

' It is now nearly two o'clock in the morning.
I fell sound asleep, but woke up again imme-
diately. ... I have become a woman to-day !
Papa, mamma, and Tolya had all gone to town,
and I was left alone. I cannot say how happy
I was to be alone. In the morning I walked in
the orchard, in the field, and I went into the
woods, and it seemed to me that I was all by
myself in the whole world, and I never had such
pleasant thoughts before. I had lunch by my-
self ; then I played for an hour, and the music
made me feel that I should live for ever, and be
happier than any one else had ever been. Then
I fell asleep in papa's study, and at four o'clock
Kate woke me, and said that Alexey Mikhailo-
vitch had come. I was very glad to see him ;
it was so pleasant to receive him and entertain
him. He came with his pair of Viatka horses,
very beautiful, and they stood all the time at the

GENTLE BREATHING 47

front door, but he stayed because it was raining,
and hoped that the roads would dry towards
evening. He was very sorry not to find papa at
home, was very animated and treated me very
politely, and made many jokes about his having
been long in love with me. Before tea we walked
in the garden, and the weather was charming,
the sun shining through the whole wet garden ;
but it grew quite cold, and he walked with me,
arm in arm, and said that he was Faust with
Margarete. He is fifty-six, but still very hand-
some, and always very well dressed — the only
thing I didn't like was his coming in a sort of
cape — he smells of English eau-de-Cologne, and
his eyes are quite young, black ; his beard is long
and elegantly parted down the middle, it is quite
silvery. We had tea in the glass verandah, and
suddenly I did not feel very well, and lay down
on the sofa while he smoked ; then he sat down
near me, and began to say nice things, and then
to take my hand and kiss it. I covered my face
with a silk handkerchief, and several times he
kissed me on the lips through the handkerchief.
... I can't understand how it happened ; I
went mad ; I never thought I was like that.
Now I have only one way out. ... I feel such
a loathing for him that I cannot endure it. . . ."

The town in these April days has become

48 GENTLE BREATHING

clean and dry, its stones have become white, and
it is easy and pleasant to walk on them. Every
Sunday, after mass, along Cathedral Street which
leads out of the town, there walks a little woman
in mourning, in black kid gloves, and with an
ebony sunshade. She crosses the yard of the
fire-station, crosses the dirty market-place by the
road where there are many black smithies, and
where the wind blows fresher from the fields ;
in the distance, between the monastery and the
gaol, is the white slope of the sky and the grey
of the spring fields ; and then, when you have
passed the muddy pools behind the monastery
wall and turn to the left, you will see what looks
like a large low garden, surrounded by a white
wall, on the gates of which is written ' ' The
Assumption of Our Lady." The little woman
makes rapid little signs of the cross, and always
walks on the main path. When she gets to the
bench opposite the oak cross she sits down, in
the wind and the chilly spring, for an hour, two
hours, until her feet in the light boots, and her
hand in the narrow kid glove, grow quite cold.
Listening to the birds of spring, singing sweetly
even in the cold, listening to the whistling of the
wind through the porcelain wreath, she sometimes
thinks that she would give half her life if only
that dead wreath might not be before her eyes.
The thought that it is Olga Meschersky who has

GENTLE BREATHING 49

been buried in that clay plunges her into astonish-
ment bordering upon stupidity : how can one
associate the sixteen-year-old school-girl, who but
two or three months ago was so full of life, charm,
happiness, with that mound of earth and that oak
cross. Is it possible that beneath it is the same
girl whose eyes shine out immortally from this
bronze medallion, and how can one connect this
bright look with the horrible event which is
associated now with Olga Meschersky ? But in
the depths of her soul the little woman is happy,
as are all those who are in love or are generally
devoted to some passionate dream.

The woman is Olga Meschersky's class-
mistress, a girl over thirty, who has for long been
living on some illusion and putting it in the
place of her actual life. At first the illusion was
her brother, a poor lieutenant, in no way remark-
able— her whole soul was bound up in him and
in his future, which, for some reason, she imagined
as splendid, and she lived in the curious expecta-
tion that, thanks to him, her fate would transport
her into some fairyland. Then, when he was
killed at Mukden, she persuaded herself that she,
very happily, is not like others, that instead of
beauty and womanliness she has intellect and
higher interests, that she is a worker for the ideal.
And now Olga Meschersky is the object of all
her thoughts, of her admiration and joy. Every

50 GENTLE BREATHING

holiday she goes to her grave — she had formed
the habit of going to the cemetery after the death
of her brother — for hours she never takes her
eyes off the oak cross ; she recalls Olga Mes-
chersky's pale face in the coffin amid the flowers,
and remembers what she once overheard : once
during the luncheon hour, while walking in the
school garden, Olga Meschersky was quickly,
quickly saying to her favourite friend, the tall
plump Subbotin :

" I have been reading one of papa's books —
he has a lot of funny old books — I read about
the kind of beauty which woman ought to possess.
There's such a lot written there, you see, I can't
remember it all ; well, of course, eyes black as
boiling pitch — upon my word, that's what they
say there, boiling pitch ! — eye-brows black as
night, and a tender flush in the complexion, a
slim figure, hands longer than the ordinary —
little feet, a fairly large breast, a regularly rounded
leg, a knee the colour of the inside of a shell,
high but sloping shoulders — a good deal of it
I have nearly learnt by heart, it is all so true ;
but do you know what the chief thing is ? Gentle
breathing ! And I have got it ; you listen how
I breathe ; isn't it gentle ? "

Now the gentle breathing has again vanished
away into the world, into the cloudy day, into
the cold spring wind. . . .

KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH

ON the yellow card with a nobleman's coronet the
young porter at the Hotel " Versailles " somehow
managed to read the Christian name and
patronymic " Kasimir Stanislavovitch." * There
followed something still more complicated and
still more difficult to pronounce. The porter
turned the card this way and that way in his hand,
looked at the passport, which the visitor had
given him with it, shrugged his shoulders —
none of those who stayed at the " Versailles "
gave their cards — then he threw both on to the
table and began again to examine himself in the
silvery, milky mirror which hung above the table,
whipping up his thick hair with a comb. He
wore an overcoat and shiny top-boots ; the gold
braid on his cap was greasy with age — the hotel
was a bad one.

Kasimir Stanislavovitch left Kiev for Moscow
on April 8th, Good Friday, on receiving a tele-
gram with the one word " tenth. " Somehow
or other he managed to get the money for his

* I.e. There was no family name. The name is Polish,
not Russian.

51

52 KASHMIR STANISLAVOVITCH

fare, and took his seat in a second-class compart-
ment, grey and dim, but really giving him the
sensation of comfort and luxury. The train was
heated, and that railway-carriage heat and the
smell of the heating apparatus, and the sharp
tapping of the little hammers in it, reminded
Kasimir Stanislavovitch of other times. At times
it seemed to him that winter had returned, that
in the fields the white, very white drifts of snow
had covered up the yellowish bristle of stubble
and the large leaden pools where the wild-duck
swam. But often the snow-storm stopped sud-
denly and melted ; the fields grew bright, and
one felt that behind the clouds was much light,
and the wet platforms of the railway-stations looked
black, and the rooks called from the naked poplars.
At each big station Kasimir Stanislavovitch went
to the refreshment-room for a drink, and returned
to his carriage with newspapers in his hands ;
but he did not read them ; he only sat and sank
in the thick smoke of his cigarettes, which burned
and glowed, and to none of his neighbours —
Odessa Jews who played cards all the time — did
he say a single word. He wore an autumn over-
coat of which the pockets were worn, a very old
black top-hat, and new, but heavy, cheap boots.
His hands, the typical hands of an habitual
drunkard, and an old inhabitant of basements,
shook when he lit a match. Everything else

KASHMIR STANISLAVOVITCH 53

about him spoke of poverty and drunkenness :
no cuffs, a dirty linen collar, an ancient tie, an
inflamed and ravaged face, bright-blue watery
eyes. His side- whiskers, dyed with a bad, brown
dye, had an unnatural appearance. He looked
tired and contemptuous.

The train reached Moscow next day, not at
all up to time ; it was seven hours late. The
weather was neither one thing nor the other, but
better and drier than in Kiev, with something
stirring in the air. Kasimir Stanislavovitch took
a cab without bargaining with the driver, and
told him to drive straight to the " Versailles/*
* I have known that hotel, my good fellow," he
said, suddenly breaking his silence, " since my
student days." From the " Versailles," as soon
as his little bag, tied with stout rope, had been
taken up to his room, he immediately went out.

It was nearly evening : the air was warm,
the black trees on the boulevards were turning
green ; everywhere there were crowds of people,
cars, carts. Moscow was trafficking and doing
business, was returning to the usual, pressing
work, was ending her holiday, and unconsciously
welcomed the spring. A man who has lived his
life and ruined it feels lonely on a spring evening
in a strange, crowded city. Kasimir Stanislavo-
vitch walked the whole length of the Tverskoy
Boulevard ; he saw once more the cast-iron

54 KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH

figure of the musing Poushkin, the golden and
lilac top of the Strasnoy Monastery. . . . For
about an hour he sat at the Caf6 Filippov, drank
chocolate, and read old comic papers. Then he
went to a cinema, whose flaming signs shone from
far away down the Tverskaya, through the
darkling twilight. From the cinema he drove
to a restaurant on the boulevard which he had
also known in his student days. He was driven
by an old man, bent in a bow, sad, gloomy,
deeply absorbed in himself, in his old age, in his
dark thoughts. All the way the man painfully
and wearily helped on his lazy horse with his
whole being, murmuring something to it all the
time and occasionally bitterly reproaching it —
and at last, when he reached the place, he allowed
the load to slip from his shoulders for a moment
and gave a deep sigh, as he took the money.

" I did not catch the name, and thought you
meant ' Brague ' ! " he muttered, turning his horse
slowly ; he seemed displeased, although the
" Prague " was further away.

" I remember the * Prague ' too, old fellow,"
answered Kasimir Stanislavovitch. ' You must
have been driving for a long time in Moscow."

" Driving ? " the old man said ; "I have
been driving now for fifty-one years."

1 That means that you may have driven me
before," said Kasimir Stanislavovitch.

KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH 55

" Perhaps I did," answered the old man dryly.
' There are lots of people in the world ; one
can't remember all of you."

Of the old restaurant, once known to Kasimir
Stanislavovitch, there remained only the name.
Now it was a large, first-class, though vulgar,
restaurant. Over the entrance burnt an electric
globe which illuminated with its unpleasant,
heliotrope light the smart, second-rate cabmen,
impudent, and cruel to their lean, short-winded
steeds. In the damp hall stood pots of laurels
and tropical plants of the kind which one sees
carried on to the platforms from weddings to
funerals and vice versa. From the porters' lodge
several men rushed out together to Kasimir
Stanislavovitch, and all of them had just the same
thick curl of hair as the porter at the " Versailles."
In the large greenish room, decorated in the
rococo style, were a multitude of broad mirrors,
and in the corner burnt a crimson icon-lamp.
The room was still empty, and only a few of the
electric lights were on. Kasimir Stanislavovitch
sat for a long time alone, doing nothing. One
felt that behind the windows with their white
blinds the long, spring evening had not yet grown
dark ; one heard from the street the thudding of
hooves ; in the middle of the room there was the
monotonous splash-splash of the little fountain
in an aquarium round which gold-fish, with their

56 KASHMIR STANISLAVOVITCH

scales peeling off, lighted somehow from below,
swam through the water. A waiter in white
brought the dinner things, bread, and a decanter
of cold vodka. Kasimir Stanislavovitch began
drinking the vodka, held it in his mouth before
swallowing it, and, having swallowed it, smelt the
black bread as though with loathing. With a
suddenness which gave even him a start, a gramo-
phone began to roar out through the room a
mixture of Russian songs, now exaggeratedly
boisterous and turbulent, now too tender, drawl-
ing, sentimental. . . . And Kasimir Stanislavo-
vitch's eyes grew red and tears filmed them at
that sweet and snuffling drone of the machine.

Then a grey-haired, curly, black-eyed Georgian
brought him, on a large iron fork, a half-cooked,
smelly shashlyk, cut off the meat on to the plate
with a kind of dissolute smartness, and, with
Asiatic simplicity, with his own hand sprinkled
it with onions, salt, and rusty barbery powder,
while the gramophone roared out in the empty
hall a cake-walk, inciting one to jerks and spasms.
Then Kasimir Stanislavovitch was served with
cheese, fruit, red wine, coffee, mineral water,
liquers. . . . The gramophone had long ago
grown silent ; instead of it there had been
playing on the platform an orchestra of German
women dressed in white ; the lighted hall, con-
tinually filling up with people, grew hot, became

KASHMIR STANISLAVOVITCH 57

dim with tobacco smoke and heavily saturated
with the smell of food ; waiters rushed about in
a whirl ; drunken people ordered cigars which
immediately made them sick ; the head-waiters
showed excessive officiousness, combined with an
intense realization of their own dignity ; in the
mirrors, in the watery gloom of their abysses,
there was more and more chaotically reflected
something huge, noisy, complicated. Several
times Kasimir Stanislavovitch went out of the hot
hall into the cool corridors, into the cold lavatory,
where there was a strange smell of the sea ; he
walked as if on air, and, on returning to his table,
again ordered wine. After midnight, closing his
eyes and drawing the fresh night air through his
nostrils into his intoxicated head, he raced in a
hansom-cab on rubber tyres out of the town to
a brothel ; he saw in the distance infinite chains
of light, running away somewhere down hill and
then up hill again, but he saw it just as if it were
not he, but some one else, seeing it. In the
brothel he nearly had a fight with a stout gentle-
man who attacked him shouting that he was
known to all thinking Russia. Then he lay,
dressed, on a broad bed, covered with a satin
quilt, in a little room half-lighted from the ceiling
by a sky-blue lantern, with a sickly smell of scented
soap, and with dresses hanging from a hook on
the door. Near the bed stood a dish of fruit,

E

58 KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH

and the girl who had been hired to entertain
Kasimir Stanislavovitch, silently, greedily, with
relish ate a pear, cutting off slices with a
knife, and her friend, with fat bare arms,
dressed only in a chemise which made her
look like a little girl, was rapidly writing on
the toilet-table, taking no notice of them.
She wrote and wept — of what ? There are
lots of people in the world ; one can't know
everything. . . .

On the tenth of April Kasimir Stanislavovitch
woke up early. Judging from the start with
which he opened his eyes, one could see that he
was overwhelmed by the idea that he was in
Moscow. He had got back after four in the
morning. He staggered down the staircase of
the " Versailles," but without a mistake he went
straight to his room down the long, stinking
tunnel of a corridor which was lighted only at
its entrance by a little lamp smoking sleepily.
Outside every room stood boots and shoes — all
of strangers, unknown to one another, hostile to
one another. Suddenly a door opened, almost
terrifying Kasimir Stanislavovitch ; on its thres-
hold appeared an old man, looking like a third-
rate actor acting " The Memoirs of a Lunatic,"
and Kasimir Stanislavovitch saw a lamp under a
green shade and a room crowded with things,
the cave of a lonely, old lodger, with icons in the

KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH 59

corner, and innumerable cigarette boxes piled one
upon another almost to the ceiling, near the icons.
Was that the half-crazy writer of the lives of the
saints, who had lived in the " Versailles " twenty-
three years ago ? Kasimir Stanislavovitch's dark
room was terribly hot with a malignant and smelly
dryness. . . . The light from the window over
the door came faintly into the darkness. Kasimir
Stanislavovitch went behind the screen, took the
top-hat off his thin, greasy hair, threw his over-
coat over the end of his bare bed. ... As soon
as he lay down, everything began to turn round
him, to rush into an abyss, and he fell asleep
instantly. In his sleep all the time he was con-
scious of the smell of the iron wash-stand which
stood close to his face, and he dreamt of a spring
day, trees in blossom, the hall of a manor house
and a number of people waiting anxiously for the
bishop to arrive at any moment ; and all night
long he was wearied and tormented with that
waiting. . . . Now in the corridors of the " Ver-
sailles " people rang, ran, called to one another.
Behind the screen, through the double, dusty
window-panes, the sun shone ; it was almost
hot. . . . Kasimir Stanislavovitch took off his
jacket, rang the bell, and began to wash. There
came in a quick-eyed boy, the page-boy, with
fox-coloured hair on his head, in a frock-coat and
pink shirt.

60 KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH

" A loaf, samovar, and lemon," Kasimir
Stanislavovitch said without looking at him.

" And tea and sugar ? " the boy asked with
Moscow sharpness.

And a minute later he rushed in with a boiling
samovar in his hand, held out level with his
shoulders ; on the round table in front of the sofa
he quickly put a tray with a glass and a battered
brass slop-basin, and thumped the samovar down
on the tray. . . . Kasimir Stanislavovitch, while
the tea was drawing, mechanically opened the
Moscow Daily, which the page-boy had brought
in with the samovar. His eye fell on a report
that yesterday an unknown man had been picked
up unconscious. . . . " The victim was taken
to the hospital," he read, and threw the paper
away. He felt very bad and unsteady. He got
up and opened the window — it faced the yard —
and a breath of freshness and of the city came to
him ; there came to him the melodious shouts of
hawkers, the bells of horse-trams humming
behind the house opposite, the blended rap-tap
of the cars, the musical drone of church-bells.
. . . The city had long since started its huge,
noisy life in that bright, jolly, almost spring day.
Kasimir Stanislavovitch squeezed the lemon into
a glass of tea and greedily drank the sour, muddy
liquid ; then he again went behind the screen.
The " Versailles " was quiet. It was pleasant

KASHMIR STANISLAVOVITCH 61

and peaceful ; his eye wandered leisurely over
the hotel notice on the wall : " A stay of three
hours is reckoned as a full day." A mouse
scuttled in the chest of drawers, rolling about a
piece of sugar left there by some visitor. . . .
Thus half asleep Kasimir Stanislavovitch lay for
a long time behind the screen, until the sun had
gone from the room and another freshness was
wafted in from the window, the freshness of
evening.

Then he carefully got himself in order : he
undid his bag, changed his underclothing, took
out a cheap, but clean handkerchief, brushed his
shiny frock-coat, top-hat, and overcoat, took out
of its torn pocket a crumpled Kiev newspaper of
January 15, and threw it away into the corner.
. . . Having dressed and combed his whiskers
with a dyeing comb, he counted his money —
there remained in his purse four roubles, seventy
copecks — and went out. Exactly at six o'clock
he was outside a low, ancient, little church in the
Molchanovka. Behind the church fence a spread-
ing tree was just breaking into green ; children
were playing there — the black stocking of one
thin little girl, jumping over a rope, was con-
tinually coming down — and he sat there on a
bench among perambulators with sleeping babies
and nurses in Russian costumes. Sparrows
prattled over all the tree ; the air was soft, all

62 KASHMIR STANISLAVOVITCH

but summer — even the dust smelt of summer —
the sky above the sunset behind the houses melted
into a gentle gold, and one felt that once more
there was somewhere in the world joy, youth,
happiness. In the church the chandeliers were
already burning, and there stood the pulpit and
in front of the pulpit was spread a little carpet.
Kasimir Stanislavovitch cautiously took off his
top-hat, trying not to untidy his hair, and entered
the church nervously ; he went into a corner, but
a corner from which he could see the couple to
be married. He looked at the painted vault,
raised his eyes to the cupola, and his every move-
ment and every gasp echoed loudly through the
silence. The church shone with gold ; the
candles sputtered expectantly. And now the
priests and choir began to enter, crossing them-
selves with the carelessness which comes of habit,
then old women, children, smart wedding guests,
and worried stewards. A noise was heard in the
porch, the crunching wheels of the carriage, and
every one turned their heads towards the entrance,
and the hymn burst out " Come, my dove ! "
Kasimir Stanislavovitch became deadly pale, as
his heart beat, and unconsciously he took a step
forward. And close by him there passed — her
veil touching him, and a breath of lily-of-the-
valley — she who did not know even of his
existence in the world ; she passed, bending her

KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH 63

charming head, all flowers and transparent gauze,
all snow-white and innocent, happy and timid,
like a princess going to her first communion. . . .
Kasimir Stanislavovitch hardly saw the bride-
groom who came to meet her, a rather small,
broad-shouldered man with yellow, close-cropped
hair. During the whole ceremony only one thing
was before his eyes : the bent head, in the flowers
and the veil, and the little hand trembling as it
held a burning candle tied with a white ribbon
in a bow. . . .

About ten o'clock he was back again in the
hotel. All his overcoat smelt of the spring air.
After coming out of the church, he had seen,
near the porch, the car lined with white satin, and
its window reflecting the sunset, and behind the
window there flashed on him for the last time the
face of her who was being carried away from him
for ever. After that he had wandered about in
little streets, and had come out on the Novensky
Boulevard. . . . Now slowly and with trembling
hands he took off his overcoat, put on the table
a paper bag containing two green cucumbers
which for some reason he had bought at a hawker's
stall. They too smelt of spring even through the
paper, and spring-like through the upper pane
of the window the April moon shone silvery high
up in the not yet darkened sky. Kasimir
Stanislavovitch lit a candle, sadly illuminating his

64 KASHMIR STANISLAVOVITCH

empty, casual home, and sat down on the sofa,
feeling on his face the freshness of evening. . . .
Thus he sat for a long time. He did not ring
the bell, gave no orders, locked himself in — all
this seemed suspicious to the porter who had seen
him enter his room with his shuffling feet and
taking the key out of the door in order to lock
himself in from the inside. Several times the
porter stole up on tiptoe to the door and looked
through the key-hole : Kasimir Stanislavovitch
was sitting on the sofa, trembling and wiping his
face with a handkerchief, and weeping so bitterly,
so copiously that the brown dye came off, and
was smeared over his face.

At night he tore the cord off the blind, and,
seeing nothing through his tears, began to
fasten it to the hook of the clothes-peg. But
the guttering candle flickered and the paper
bag, and terrible dark waves swam and flickered
over the locked room : he was old, weak —
and he himself was well aware of it. ... No,
it was not in his power to die by his own
hand !

In the morning he started for the railway
station about three hours before the train left.
At the station he quietly walked about among
the passengers, with his eyes on the ground and
tear-stained ; and he would stop unexpectedly
now before one and now before another, and in

KASHMIR STANISLAVOVITCH 65

a low voice, evenly but without expression, he
would say rather quickly :

" For God's sake ... I am in a desperate
position. . . . My fare to Briansk. ... If only
a few copecks. . . ."

And some passengers, trying not to look at
his top-hat, at the worn velvet collar of his over-
coat, at the dreadful face with the faded violet
whiskers, hurriedly, and with confusion, gave him
something.

And then, rushing out of the station on to the
platform, he got mixed in the crowd and dis-
appeared into it, while in the " Versailles," in the
room which for two days had as it were belonged
to him, they carried out the slop-pail, opened the
windows to the April sun and to the fresh air,
noisily moved the furniture, swept up and threw
out the dust — and with the dust there fell under
the table, under the table cloth which slid on to
the floor, his torn note, which he had forgotten
with the cucumbers :

l< I beg that no one be accused of my death.
I was at the wedding of my only daughter
who . ."

SON

MADAME MARAUD was born and grew up in
Lausanne, in a strict, honest, industrious family.
She did not marry young, but she married for
love. In March, 1876, among the passengers
on an old French ship, the Auvergne, sailing from
Marseilles to Italy, was the newly married couple.
The weather was calm and fresh ; the silvery
mirror of the sea appeared and disappeared in
the mists of the spring horizon. The newly
married couple never left the deck. Every one
liked them, every one looked at their happiness
with friendly smiles ; his happiness showed itself
in the energy and keenness of his glance, in a
need for movement, in the animation of his
welcome to those around him ; hers showed itself
in the joy and interest with which she took in
each detail. . . . The newly married couple were
the Marauds.

He was about ten years her elder ; he was
not tall, with a swarthy face and curly hair ; his
hand was dry and his voice melodious. One felt
in her the presence of some other, non-Latin

66

SON 67

blood ; she was over medium height, although
her figure was charming, and she had dark hair
and blue-grey eyes. After touching at Naples,
Palermo, and Tunis, they arrived at the Algerian
town of Constantine, where M. Maraud had
obtained a rather good post. And their life in
Constantine, for the fourteen years since that
happy spring, gave them everything with which
people are normally satisfied : wealth, family
happiness, healthy and beautiful children.

During the fourteen years the Marauds had
greatly changed in appearance. He became as
dark as an Arab ; from his work, from travelling,
from tobacco and the sun, he had grown grey
and dried up— many people mistook him for a
native of Algeria. And it would have been im-
possible to recognize in her the woman who sailed
once in the Auvergne : at that time there was even
in the boots which she put outside her door at
night the charm of youth ; now there was silver
in her hair, her skin had become more transparent
and more of a golden colour, her hands were
thinner and in her care of them, of her linen, and
of her clothes she already showed a certain
excessive tidiness. Their relations had certainly
changed too, although no one could say for the
worse. They each lived their own life : his time
was filled with work — he remained the same
passionate, and, at the same time, sober man that

68 SON

he had been before ; her time was filled up with
looking after him and their children, two pretty
girls, of whom the elder was almost a young lady :
and every one with one voice agreed that in all
Constantine there was no better hostess, no better
mother, no more charming companion in the
drawing-room than Madame Maraud.

Their house stood in a quiet, clean part of
the town. From the front rooms on the second
floor, which were always half dark with the blinds
drawn down, one saw Constantine, known the
world over for its picturesqueness. On steep
rocks stands the ancient Arab fortress which has
become a French city. The windows of the
living-rooms looked into a garden where in per-
petual heat and sunshine slumbered the evergreen
eucalyptuses, the sycamores, and palms behind
high walls. The master was frequently away on
business, and the lady led the secluded existence
to which the wives of Europeans are doomed in
the colonies. On Sundays she always went to
church. On weekdays she rarely went out, and
she visited only a small and select circle. She
read, did needle-work, talked or did lessons with
the children ; sometimes taking her younger
daughter, the black-eyed Marie, on her knee, she
would play the piano with one hand and sing old
French songs, in order to while away the long
African day, while the great breath of hot wind

SON 69

blew in through the open windows from the
garden. . . . Constantine, with all its shutters
closed and scorched pitilessly by the sun, seemed
at such hours a dead city : only the birds called
behind the garden wall, and from the hills behind
the town came the dreary sound of pipes, filled
with the melancholy of colonial countries, and at
times there the dull thud of guns shook the earth,
and you could see the flashing of the white
helmets of soldiers.

The days in Constantine passed monotonously,
but no one noticed that Madame Maraud minded
that. In her pure, refined nature there was no
trace of abnormal sensitiveness or excessive
nervousness. Her health could not be called
robust, but it gave no cause of anxiety to M.
Maraud. Only one incident once astonished
him : in Tunis once, an Arab juggler so quickly
and completely hypnotized her that it was only
with difficulty that she could be brought to. But
this happened at the time of their arrival from
France ; she had never since experienced so
sudden a loss of will-power, such a morbid
suggestibility. And M. Maraud was happy, un-
troubled, convinced that her soul was tranquil and
open to him. And it was so, even in the last,
the fourteenth year of their married life. But then
there appeared in Constantine Emile Du-Buis.

Emile Du-Buis, the son of Madame Bonnay,

70 SON

an old and good friend of M. Maraud, was only
nineteen. Emile was the son of her first husband
and had grown up in Paris where he studied law,
but he spent most of his time in writing poems,
intelligible only to himself ; he was attached to
the school of " Seekers " which has now ceased
to exist. Madame Bonnay, the widow of an
engineer, also had a daughter, Elise. In May,
1889, Elise was just going to be married, when
she fell ill and died a few days before her wedding,
and Emile, who had never been in Constantine,
came to the funeral. It can be easily understood
how that death moved Madame Maraud, the
death of a girl already trying on her wedding
dress ; it is also known how quickly in such
circumstances an intimacy springs up between
people who have hardly met before. Besides, to
Madame Maraud Emile was, indeed, only a boy.
Soon after the funeral Madame Bonnay went for
the summer to stay with her relations in France.
Emile remained in Constantine, in a suburban
villa which belonged to his late step-father, the
villa " Hashim," as it was called in the town,
and he began coming nearly every day to the
Marauds. Whatever he was, whatever he pre-
tended to be, he was still very young, very sensi-
tive, and he needed people to whom he could
attach himself for a time. " And isn't it strange ? "
some said ; " Madame Maraud has become

SON 71

unrecognizable ! How lively she has become,
and how her looks have improved ! "

However, these insinuations were groundless.
At first there was only this, that her life had
become a little bit jollier, and her girls too had
become more playful and coquettish, since Emile,
every now and then forgetting his sorrow and the
poison with which, as he thought, the Jin de siecle
had infected him, would for hours at a time play
with Marie and Louise as if he were their age.
It is true that he was all the same a man, a
Parisian, and not altogether an ordinary man.
He had already taken part in that life, inaccessible
to ordinary mortals, which Parisian writers live ;
he often read aloud, with a hypnotic expressive-
ness, strange but sonorous poems ; and, perhaps
it was entirely owing to him that Madame
Maraud's walk had become lighter and quicker,
her dress at home imperceptibly smarter, the
tones of her voice more tender and playful. Per-
haps, too, there was in her soul a drop of purely
feminine pleasure that here was a man to whom
she could give her small commands, with whom
she could talk, half seriously and half jokingly as
a mentor, with that freedom which their difference
in age so naturally allowed — a man who was so
devoted to her whole household, in which, how-
ever, the first person — this, of course, very soon
became clear — was for him, nevertheless, she

72 SON

herself. But how common all that is ! And
the chief thing was that often what she really
felt for him was only pity.

He honestly thought himself a born poet, and
he wished outwardly too to look like a poet ; his
long hair was brushed back with artistic modesty ;
his hair was fine, brown, and suited his pale face
just as did his black clothes ; but the pallor was
too bloodless, with a yellow tinge in it ; his eyes
were always shining, but the tired look in his
face made them seem feverish ; and so flat and
narrow was his chest, so thin his legs and hands,
that one felt a little uncomfortable when one saw
him get very excited and run in the street or
garden, with his body pushed forward a little,
as though he were gliding, in order to hide his
defect, that he had one leg shorter than the other.
In company he was apt to be unpleasant, haughty,
trying to appear mysterious, negligent, at times
elegantly dashing, at times contemptuously absent-
minded, in everything independent ; but too
often he could not carry it through to the end, he
became confused and began to talk hurriedly
with naive frankness. And, of course, he was
not very long able to hide his feelings, to main-
tain the pose of not believing in love or in happi-
ness on earth. He had already begun to bore
his host by his visits ; every day he would bring
from his villa bouquets of the rarest flowers, and

SON 73

he would sit from morn to night reading poems
which were more and more unintelligible — the
children often heard him beseeching some one that
they should die together — while he spent his
nights in the native quarter, in dens where
Arabs, wrapped in dirty white robes, greedily
watch the danse de venire, and drank fiery liqueurs.
... In a word it took less than six weeks for his
passion to change into God knows what.

His nerves gave way completely. Once he
sat for nearly the whole day in silence ; then he
got up, bowed, took his hat and went out — and
half an hour later he was carried in from the
street in a terrible state ; he was in hysterics and
he wept so passionately that he terrified the
children and servants. But Madame Maraud,
it seemed, did not attach any particular impor-
tance to this delirium. She herself tried to help
him recover himself, quickly undid his tie, told
him to be a man, and she only smiled when he,
without any restraint in her husband's presence,
caught her hands and covered them with kisses
and vowed devotion to her. But an end had to
be put to all this. When, a few days after this
outbreak, Emile, whom the children had greatly
missed, arrived calm, but looking like some one
who has been through a serious illness, Madame
Maraud gently told him everything which is
always said on such occasions.

F

74 SON

" My friend, you are like a son to me," she
said to him, for the first time uttering the word
son, and, indeed, almost feeling a maternal
affection. " Don't put me in a ridiculous and
painful position."

" But I swear to you, you are mistaken ! "
he exclaimed, with passionate sincerity. " I am
only devoted to you. I only want to see you,
nothing else ! "

And suddenly he fell on his knees — they were
in the garden, on a quiet, hot, dark evening —
impetuously embraced her knees, nearly fainting
with passion. And looking at his hair, at his
thin white neck, she thought with pain and
ecstasy :

" Ah yes, yes, I might have had such a son,
almost his age ! "

However, from that time until he left for
France he behaved reasonably. This essentially
was a bad sign, for it might mean that his passion
had become deeper. But outwardly everything
had changed for the better — only once did he
break down. It was on a Sunday after dinner
at which several strangers were present, and he,
careless of whether they noticed it, said to her :

" I beg you to spare me a minute."

She got up and followed him into the empty,
half-dark drawing-room. He went to the
window through which the evening light fell in

SON 75

broad shafts, and, looking straight into her face,
said :

" To-day is the day on which my father died.
I love you ! "

She turned and was about to leave him.
Frightened, he hastily called after her :

" Forgive me, it is for the first and last time ! "

Indeed, she heard no further confessions from
him. lt I was fascinated by her agitation," he
noted that night in his diary in his elegant and
pompous style ; "I swore never again to disturb
her peace of mind : am I not blessed enough
without that ? ' He continued to come to town
— he only slept at the villa Hashim — and he
behaved erratically, but always more or less
properly. At times he was, as before, un-
naturally playful and naive, running about with
the children in the garden ; but more often he
sat with her and " sipped of her presence," read
newspapers and novels to her, and " was happy
in her listening to him." * The children were
not in the way," he wrote of those days, " their
voices, laughter, comings and goings, their very
beings acted like the subtlest conductors for our
feelings ; thanks to them, the charm of those
feelings was intensified ; we talked about the
most everyday matters, but something else
sounded through what we said : our happiness ;
yes, yes, she, too, was happy — I maintain that !

76 SON

She loved me to read poetry ; in the evenings
from the balcony we looked down upon Con-
stantine, lying at our feet in the bluish moon-
light. . . ." At last, in August Madame Maraud
insisted that he should go away, return to his
work ; and during his journey he wrote : " I'm
going away ! I am going away, poisoned by the
bitter sweet of parting ! She gave me a remem- »
brance, a velvet ribbon which she wore round her
neck as a young girl. At the last moment she
blessed me, and I saw tears shine in her eyes,
when she said : * Good-bye, my dear son.' '

Was he right in thinking that Madam
Maraud was also happy in August ? No one
knows. But that his leaving was painful to her
— there is no doubt of that. That word " son,"
which had often troubled her before, now had
a sound for her which she could not bear to
hear. Formerly when friends met her on the
way to church, and said to her jokingly : " What
have you to pray for, Madame Maraud ? You
are already without sin and without troubles ! "
she more than once answered with a sad smile :
" I complain to God that he has not given me a
son." Now the thought of a son never left her,
the thought of the happiness that he would con-
stantly give her by his mere existence in the world.
And once, soon after Emile's departure, she said
to her husband :

SON 77

" Now I understand it all. I now believe
firmly that every mother ought to have a son,
that every mother who has no son, if she look into
her own heart and examine her whole life, will
realize that she is unhappy. You are a man and
cannot feel that, but it is so. . . Oh how tenderly,
passionately a woman can love a son ! "

She was very affectionate to her husband
during that autumn. It would happen some-
times that, sitting alone with him, she would
suddenly say bashfully :

" Listen, Hector. ... I am ashamed to
mention it again to you, but still ... do you
ever think of March, '76 ? Ah, if we had had a
son ! "

" All this troubled me a good deal," M.
Maraud said later, 4< and it troubled me the more
because she began to get thin and out of health.
She grew feeble, became more and more silent
and gentle. She went out to our friends more
and more rarely, she avoided going to town unless
compelled. ... I have no doubt that some
terrible, incomprehensible disease had been
gradually getting hold of her, body and soul ! "
And the governess added that that autumn,
Madame Maraud, if she went out, invariably put
on a thick white veil, which she had never done
before, and that, on coming home, she would
immediately take it off in front of the glass and

78 SON

would carefully examine her tired face. It is
unnecessary to explain what had been going on in
her soul during that period. But did she desire
to see Emile ? Did he write to her and did she
answer him ? He produced before the court two
telegrams which he alleged she sent him in reply
to letters of his. One was dated November 10 :
' You are driving me mad. Be calm. Send
me a message immediately." The other of
December 23 : " No, no, don't come, I implore
you. Think of me, love me as a mother." But, of
course, the truth that the telegrams had been sent
by her could not be proved. Only this is certain,
that from September to January the life which
Madame Maraud lived was miserable, agitated,
morbid.

The late autumn of that year in Constantine
was cold and rainy. Then, as is always the case
in Algeria, there suddenly came a delightful
spring. And a liveliness began again to return
to Madame Maraud, that happy, subtle intoxica-
tion which people who have already lived through
their youth feel at the blossoming of spring. She
began to go out again ; she drove out a good deal
with the children and used to take them to the
deserted garden of the villa Hashim ; she in-
tended to go to Algiers, and to show the children
Blida near which there is in the hills a wooded
gorge, the favourite haunt of monkeys. And so

SON 79

it went on until January 17 of the year 1893.
On January 17 she woke up with a feeling of
gentle happiness which, it seemed, had agitated
her the whole night. Her husband was away on
business, and in his absence she slept alone in the
large room ; the blinds and curtains made it
almost dark. Still from the pale bluishness
which filtered in one could see that it was very
early. And, indeed, the little watch on the night
table showed that it was six o'clock. She felt
with delight the morning freshness coming from
the garden, and, wrapping the light blanket round
her, turned to the wall. . . . " Why am I so
happy ? " she thought as she fell asleep. And
in vague and beautiful visions she saw scenes in
Italy and Sicily, scenes of that far-off spring when
she sailed in a cabin, with its windows opening
on to the deck and the cold silvery sea, with
doorhangings which time had worn and faded
to a rusty silver colour, with its threshold of brass
shining from perpetual polishings. . . . Then
she saw boundless bays, lagoons, low shores, an
Arab city all white with flat roofs and behind it
misty blue hills and mountains. It was Tunis,
where she had only once been, that spring when
she was in Naples, Palermo. . . . But then, as
though the chill of a wave had passed over her,
with a start, she opened her eyes. It was past
eight ; she heard the voices of the children and the
governess. She got up, put on a wrap, and,

8o SON

going out on to the balcony, went down to the
garden and sat in the rocking-chair. It stood
on the sand by a round table under a blossoming
mimosa tree which made a golden arbour heavily
scented in the sun. The maid brought her coffee.
She again began to think of Tunis, and she
remembered the strange thing which had hap-
pened to her there, the sweet terror and happy
silence of the moment before death which she
had experienced in that pale-blue city in a warm
pink twilight, half lying in a rocking-chair on
the hotel roof, faintly seeing the dark face of the
Arab hypnotizer and juggler, who squatted in
front of her and sent her to sleep by his hardly
audible, monotonous melodies and the slow move-
ments of his thin hands. And suddenly, as she
was thinking and was looking mechanically with
wide-open eyes at the bright silver spark which
shone in the sunlight from the spoon in the glass
of water, she lost consciousness. . . . When with
a start she opened her eyes again, Emile was
standing over her.

All that followed after that unexpected meet-
ing is known from the words of Emile himself,
from his story, from his answers in cross-examina-
tion. * Yes, I came to Constantine out of the
blue ! " he said ; " I came because I felt that the
Powers of Heaven themselves could not stop me.
In the morning of January 1 7 straight from the
railway station, without any warning, I arrived

SON 8 1

at M. Maraud's house and ran into the garden.
I was overwhelmed by what I saw, but no sooner
had I taken a step forward than she woke up.
She seemed to be amazed both by the unexpected-
ness of my appearance and by what had been
happening to her, but she uttered no cry. She
looked at me like a person who has just woken
up from a sound sleep, and then she got up,
arranging her hair.

' It is just what I anticipated," she said with-
out expression ; " you did not obey me ! "

And with a characteristic movement she
folded the wrap round her bosom, and taking my
head in her two hands kissed me twice on the
forehead.

I was bewildered with passionate ecstasy, but
she quietly pushed me from her and said :

II Come, I am not dressed ; I'll be back
presently ; go to the children. "

u But, for the love of God, what was the
matter with you just now ? " I asked, following
her on to the balcony.

" Oh, it was nothing, a slight faintness ; I had
been looking at the shining spoon," she answered,
regaining control of herself, and beginning to
speak with animation. " But what have you
done, what have you done ! "

I could not find the children anywhere ; it
was empty and quiet in the house. I sat in the
dining-room, and heard her suddenly begin to

82 SON

sing in a distant room in a strong, medodious
voice, but I did not understand then the full
horror of that singing, because I was trembling
with nervousness. I had not slept at all all
night ; I had counted the minutes while the
train was hurrying me to Constantine ; I jumped
into the first carriage I met, raced out of the
station ; I did not expect as I came to the town.
... I knew I, too, had a foreboding that my
coming would be fatal to us ; but still what I
saw in the garden, that mystical meeting, and that
sudden change in her attitude towards me, I could
not expect that ! In ten minutes she came down
with her hair dressed, in a light grey dress with
a shade of blue in it.

" Ah," she said, while I kissed her hand,
" I forgot that to-day is Sunday ; the children
are at church, and I overslept. . . . After church
the children will go to the pine-wood — have you
ever been there ? "

And, without waiting for my answer, she rang
the bell, and told them to bring me coffee. She
began to look fixedly at me, and, without listening
to my replies, to ask me how I lived, and what
I was doing ; she began to speak of herself, of
how, after two or three very bad months during
which she had become " terribly old " — those
words were uttered with an imperceptible smile —
she now felt so well, as young, as never before.
... I answered, listened, but a great deal I did

SON 83

not understand. Both of us said meaningless
things ; my hands grew cold at the thought of
another terrible and inevitable hour. I do not
deny that I felt as though I were struck by
lightning when she said " I have grown old. . . ."
I suddenly noticed that she was right ; in the
thinness of her hands, and faded, though youthful,
face, in the dryness of some of the outlines of her
figure, I noticed the first signs of that which,
painfully and somehow awkwardly — but still more
painfully — makes one's heart contract at the sight
of an ageing woman. Oh yes, how quickly and
sharply she had changed, I thought. But still
she was beautiful ; I grew intoxicated looking at
her. I had been accustomed to dream of her
endlessly ; I had never for an instant forgotten
when, in the evening of July 1 1, I had embraced
her knees for the first time. Her hands, too,
trembled slightly, as she arranged her hair and
spoke and smiled and looked at me ; and sud-
denly— you will understand the whole catas-
trophic power of that woman — suddenly that
smile somehow became distorted, and she said
with difficulty, but yet firmly :

* You must go home, you must rest after
your journey — you are not looking yourself ;
your eyes are so terribly suffering, your lips so
burning that I cannot bear it any longer. . . .
Would you like me to come with you, to accom-
pany you ? "

84 SON

And, without waiting for my answer, she got
up and went to put on her hat and cloak. . . .

We drove quickly to the villa Hashim. I
stopped for a moment on the terrace to pick some
flowers. She did not wait for me, but opened
the door herself. I had no servants ; there was
only a watchman, but he did not see us. When
I came into the hall, hot and dark with its drawn
blinds, and gave her the flowers, she kissed them ;
then, putting one arm round me, she kissed me.
Her lips were dry from excitement, but her voice
was clear.

" But listen . . . how shall we ... have
you got anything ? " she asked.

At first I did not understand her ; I was so
overwhelmed by the first kiss, the first endear-
ment, and I murmured :

" What do you mean ? "

She shrank back.

" What ! " she said, almost sternly. " Did
you imagine that I ... that we can live after
this ? Have you anything to kill ourselves
with ? "

I understood, and quickly showed her my
revolver, loaded with five cartridges, which I
always kept on me.

She walked away quickly ahead of me from
one room to the other. I followed her with that
numbness of the senses with which a naked man
on a sultry day walks out into the sea ; I heard

SON 85

the rustle of her skirts. At last we were there ;
she threw off her cloak and began to untie the
strings of her hat. Her hands were still trembling
and in the half-light I again noticed something,
pitiful and tired in her face. . . .

But she died with firmness. At the last
moment she was transformed ; she kissed me,
and moving her head back so as to see my face,
she whispered to me such tender and moving
words that I cannot repeat them.

I wanted to go out and pick some flowers to
strew on the death-bed. She would not let me ;
she was in a hurry and said :

II No, no, you must not . . . there are flowers
here . . . here are your flowers," and she kept
on repeating : " And see, I beseech you by all
that is sacred to you, kill me ! "

" Yes, and then I will kill myself," I said,
without for a moment doubting my resolution.

" Oh, I believe you, I believe you," she
answered, already apparently half-unconscious. . . .

A moment before her death she said very
quietly and simply :

' My God, this is unspeakable ! "

And again :

* Where are the flowers you gave me ? Kiss
me — for the last time."

She herself put the revolver to her head. I
wanted to do it, but she stopped me :

" No, that is not right ; let me do it. Like

86 SON

this, my child. . . . And afterwards make the
sign of the cross over me and lay the flowers on
my heart. . . ."

When I fired, she made a slight movement
with her lips, and I fired again. . . .

She lay quiet ; in her dead face there was a
kind of bitter happiness. Her hair was loose ;
the tortoise-shell comb lay on the floor. I
staggered to my feet in order to put an end to
myself. But the room, despite the blinds, was
light ; in the light and stillness which suddenly
surrounded me, I saw clearly her face already
pale. . . . And suddenly madness seized me ;
I rushed to the window, undid and threw open
the shutters, began shouting and firing into the
air. . . . The rest you know. . . ."

[In the spring, five years ago, while wandering
in Algeria, the writer of these lines visited Con-
stantine. . . . There often comes to him a
memory of the cold, rainy, and yet spring evenings
which he spent by the fire in the reading-room
of a certain old and homely French hotel. In the
heavy, elaborate book-case were much-read illus-
trated papers, and in them you could see the faded
photographs of Madame Maraud. There were
photographs taken of her at different ages, and
among them the Lausanne portrait of her as a
girl. . . . Her story is told here once more, from
a desire to tell it in one's own way.]

THE HOGARTH PRESS

PARADISE ROAD, RICHMOND, SURREY

PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS

CLIVE BELL

Poems. 2s. 6d. net.

T. S. ELIOT

Poems. Out of print.

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The Story of the Siren. 2s. 6d. net.

ROGER FRY

Twelve Original Woodcuts. Third impression. 5<r. net.

MAXIM GORKY

Reminiscences of Tolstoi. Second edition. 5-r. net.

KATHERINE MANSFIELD

Prelude. 3^. 6<t. net.

HOPE MIRRLEES

Paris. A Poem. Out of print.

J. MIDDLETON MURRY

The Critic in Judgment. 2s. 6d. net.

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Stories from the Old Testament retold. 4J. 6d. net.

The Note-books of ANTON TCHEKHOV, together with
Reminiscences of TCHEKHOV by Maxim Gorky. 5.$-. net.

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Stories of the East. 3-r. net.

VIRGINIA WOOLF
Monday or Tuesday.

Second edition.

The Mark on the Wall.
Kew Gardens.

LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF
Two Stories.

4-r. 6d. net.
is. 6d. net.
Out of print.

Out of print.

Forthcoming Publications

KARN. A Poem. By Ruth Manning-Sanders.
3.$-. 6d. net.

DAYBREAK. A Book of Poems. By Fredegond
Shove. 35. 6d. net.

THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
and other Stories. By I. A. Bunin. Translated
from the Russian by S. S. Koteliansky and
Leonard Woolf.